Tools to Monitor Search Engine Positions For Startups
Organic search is a cost-effective channel in marketing departments for most established companies who sell their products online.
For startups, a comprehensive organic acquisition strategy would usually not be the first area to concentrate on, as focussing on paid search and paid social to drive traffic would be a quicker way to test conversion of new products in the market.
With the data and learnings from paid search, it usually can then make dipping the toe into organic search that much easier, as you’ll at least know which search terms are worth the time and investment for both content creation and which pages are the most important for your business.
To monitor current and future positions of keywords, there are a great many SEO tools out there. But which ones out there are reasonably priced for a startup? And what do you get for your money?…
Proper use of well planned long tail keywords is key to SEO success
Long tail keywords are about more than squeezing that last bit of traffic from an overused search engine. They are the closest thing to reading minds outside of a comic book. A long tail keywords is any search of 4 words or more. Since they make up about 70% of all searches, it pays to learn how to use Google to read minds.
Other People’s Problems
Understanding the long tail keywords related to your business is the first step to getting a higher ranking on Google. Search engines are so popular because people want information for solving a problem. It doesn’t matter if it’s curing an illness, buying the right camera or learning to dance the polka. The stronger the need, the more specific the search. The more specific the search, the more likely action gets taken. We use search engines…
Allo, Allo, Allo, what marketing implications do we have here then?
Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended Source: Allo.Google.com
Google announcement this week of the launch of its new messenger app has got marketers excited. And no, it's not because of the new emojis. It's because it follows the industry-wide trend for integrating AI-powered digital assistants into messaging apps. The announcement comes hot of the heels of Facebook's announcement earlier this month which hailed the introduction of 'Messanger version 1.2', which would include facilities to let chatbots handle payments within the app.
The chat app has lots of nifty little features to tempt users, which aren't all that important to marketers. These are things like being able to enlarge or shrink text, send auto-generated responses, doodle on images or send an impressive range of stupid emojis.
The key feature from a marketing perspective is the fact the app contains a personal assistant that utilises 'Google Now', which uses a natural language interface…
Greater public trust in search engines only reinforces the importance of SEO
It's the morning after the night before. For those political nerds this side of the Atlantic who stayed up well into the early hours to watch the debate between the two candidates to become the leader of the free world, I can only say well done.
Among the barbed questions, infantile bickering and rude interruptions, discerning observers may have noticed one thing missing. Objectively verified facts. Sure the candidates bandied around plenty of statistics, but sometimes what matters more is not the statistic but its source. And even is a statistic is technically correct, it may be incredibly misleading. For example Donald Trump's repeated claim that 52% of African American's are unemployed includes all those who are in school, college, staying home for childcare, volunteering or retired. Hardly everyone's definition of 'unemployed'.
The fact a candidate to be president of the richest, most powerful nation on earth…
It was long thought that having the keyword in your domain name would help you in the SERPs. Is this actually the case?
Ahrefs have done some stellar research into the On-page ranking factors in 2016 and have found many interesting nuggets.
Back in 2012 Google rolled out an updated intended to bring an end to high ranking, low-quality Exact Match Domains (EMDs). Since then, the scurry to find high volume, keyword rich domains has somewhat diminished. But does have an EMD still impact the SERPs?
As evidenced in the data, there is a clear jump between position #1 and #2 which suggests that either the EMD update is no longer in effect, or something different is going on.
First of all, the phrasing used by Matt Cutts himself was "Minor weather report: Small upcoming Google algo change will…
Our interview with Rob Hammond, Head of SEO for publisher Trinity Mirror group
We asked the head of SEO for Trinty Mirror Group (the publisher behind major UK daily newspapers, such as The Mirror) about key SEO trends and how he see SEO changing in future.
What do you regard as the most significant SEO trends (and updates) that have impacted your current SEO strategy?
As a publisher, the growth of mobile is by far the most significant trend in search today. It has disrupted both the way that people search and the way that we produce content.
Google talks about the importance of "micro moments" on mobile - reaching people precisely at the short moment they have an information need. I think it's a really helpful way to think of how search has evolved, and will continue to evolve as we grow accustomed…
What we learned from implementing AMPs
This week's big development here at Smart Insights is the implementation of Accelerated Mobile Pages for our blog. If you are reading this on the standard HTML version (looks the same as normal) visit this post as an AMP to see what we have done.
Over the last year, we have published updates about how Google is implementing and utilising AMPs to improve everybody's mobile web experience.
A timeline of AMP
Let me recap the main developments of AMP:
December 2015
Google announced that it was seeing 16,000 new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) every single day. This was an impressive rate of adoption and showed the extent to which publisher wanted to attract audiences of mobile devices.
February 2016
Then in February we saw Google has started rolling out Accelerated mobile pages…
Leverage local SEO and influencers to boost your business's position in SERPs
If you’re a small business looking to get noticed on the organic search landscape with a limited budget, you’ll need to pick your battles wisely and arm yourself with a realistic and informed approach. Here are some useful things for small businesses and entrepreneurs to consider:
1. If you are a local business, focus your organic search efforts there first.
Traffic from local visitors is intentful and often more likely to convert – so it should not be overlooked. Also, the good news is that you’ll often find it much easier to dominate the organic SERPs for local search queries than you will do for broad, non-geotargeted queries. Google estimates that over 20% of all search has a local intent, so it’s worth pouncing on the opportunity.
2. From an SEO perspective, many claim that 2016 is the ‘year of the influencer’.
Influencer partnerships…
Just what is structured data? And how will it help your business appear more creative and memorable in search results?
Rich snippets have been around for some time now, as has Google’s knowledge graph, which was added to search engine result pages (SERPs) in 2012. Over the last year, we’ve also now started to see structured data, which is used to implement these different displays of information, become an even greater influence on SERPs, especially Google’s.
On May 17th 2016, Google rolled out a number of changes to how their search engine handles structured data, with the most important changes being the introduction of rich cards. These are a complete restructure of Google’s documentation about structured data, alongside a new report function in Google Search Console for data relating to rich cards.
Before we delve into the technical stuff,…
Creating great assests should be the cornerstone of your SEO strategy. Here's how to make them without going mad.
Is it getting difficult to come up with a new topics for your blog posts? Do you struggle to write even 500 words a day? Or maybe writing too much has taken a toll on you.
Yet you carry on, trudging through word after word because you want backlinks, to get backlinks, you need content.
What if I told you that it’s possible to create outstanding content without any writing?
As I’ll show you below, there are tons of linkable assets you can create without ever stringing together more than a paragraph.
What are Linkable Assets?
First, let’s answer a simple question: what exactly are “linkable assets”?
Linkable assets are essentially high quality content pieces you can use in your outreach to get links, or to attract links naturally.
Think of them as parts of your website that…
